Resultado de "Susan Kaye Quinn" em Todas as categorias

The thing the machines consume is us. Ready to lease out your mind? Or pay for your next meal with involuntary ads? The Closet Full of Time collection contains five short stories that speak to that sinking feeling that we're serving the machines instead of the other way around. That our inventions are taking things we can’t afford to lose.

SHORT STORY: A very short story about the cost of cutting down a tree. I Came Home From Saving the Rainforest is one of six short solarpunk stories in the Halfway to Better collection. If you enjoyed the optimistic climate solutions in Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future or the cozy cooperative future in Becky Chambers' Monk and Robot series, you will enjoy Halfway to Better.

Halfway to Better is a collection of short solarpunk stories, each exploring a near-future where were struggling to survive the climate crisis and build a better world. These hopeful climate-fiction stories take you from the bottom of the sea to the towers of a bot-filled city, from sparkling labs to flooded lighthouses, all imagining futures halfway to a better world. The Halfway to Better collection contains six short stories plus a bonus prose-poem, Rewilding Indiana, and its accompanying sky shanty.

SHORT STORY: At the bottom of the sea, a trawler crawls across an abyssal plain, carefully cleaning microplastics off the ancient mineral-rich nodules, when the crew finds something that shouldn't be possible. Slimy Things Did Crawl is one of six short solarpunk stories in the Halfway to Better collection.

SHORT STORY: A cute technician keeps breaking things in her too-shiny lab, then calling a fixer in for repairs. Zita's a certified member of the International Guild of Repair Workers, Local 772, and she's certain this hot girl is breaking her toys on purpose. But why? Something very sexy but very weird is going on...

SHORT STORY: Humanity has left the cities to live in the "greenbelt," but a young woman's curiosity brings her back to the bot-patrolled streets where human beings used to live... until she gets caught. Tombs Without Bodies is one of six short solarpunk stories in the Halfway to Better collection. If you enjoyed the optimistic climate solutions in Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future or the cozy cooperative future in Becky Chambers' Monk and Robot series, you will enjoy Halfway to Better.

SHORT STORY: A sister in the far future, when we no longer burn things for fuel, finds a forbidden thing that would make the perfect gift. The Day We Stopped Burning is one of six short solarpunk stories in the Halfway to Better collection. If you enjoyed the optimistic climate solutions in Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future or the cozy cooperative future in Becky Chambers' Monk and Robot series, you will enjoy Halfway to Better.

SHORT STORY: Living in a flooded lighthouse is probably illegal, but no one has come to kick her out, so she keeps furtively tending the oyster beds and feeding the crows. But when a storm brings an unexpected, and unwelcome, visitor, her time in this final refuge might be at an end. Planting the Shell-Bones is one of six short solarpunk stories in the Halfway to Better collection. If you enjoyed the optimistic climate solutions in Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future or the cozy cooperative future in Becky Chambers' Monk and Robot series, you will enjoy Halfway to Better.

Nitara Desai has spent her life negotiating international agreements, easing points of conflict, and averting disasters. Worst-case scenarios belong in her nightmares, not the IEC’s daily reports. On a calm day, being a director at the International Energy Consortium only requires fixing CarbonCon translators for flustered Brazilian delegates. A thankless job, but the world is still drowning in CO2—there’s no choice but to keep treading.

Akemi’s job on the Public Utilities Commission has its own daily disasters—making sure the infrastructure of civilization keeps running is the most thankless job on the planet. When a double event hits—heatwave plus viral breakout—keeping the power on is an all-out battle. It doesn’t help that he’s distracted by his elderly father, who was struck down and neuro-compromised by the same virus that killed his mother the year before.

For better, for worse. In sickness and in health. It’s a legal vow of care for families in 2050, a world beset by waves of climate-driven plagues. Power engineer Lucía Ramirez long ago lost her family to one - she’d give anything to take that vow. The Power Islands give humanity a fighting chance, but tending kelp farms and solar lilies is a lonely job.

Human cloning. Technology evolves faster than we do. The law shields us from our worst temptations. But the opportunity is there, dangling just out of reach - perfection and ascension or delusion and destruction. The choice is ours. In this collection of clone-themed stories, 10 of today’s top speculative fiction writers explore our morality and built-in societal restraints and reflect upon our state of grace. Similar is not necessarily the same.

Wraith is a shadow in the night, haunting the bedrooms of the rich "high potentials" who have stolen life energy from the desperate and dying. The justice and the sweet mercy hit that follow keep her from falling into her own personal abyss. Her secret nighttime work also keeps her on level for her real job: Carrying on her father's mission to bring an end to debt collection as a whole.

The war has begun, and with the Queen of Dharia on her deathbed, Aniri’s excessively-proper eldest sister, first daughter Nahali, finally sees her chance to claim the crown. Aniri and Nahali have never seen eye-to-eye, not since they were girls running through the palace courtyard, but with Prince Malik and second daughter Seledri kidnapped, Aniri can’t afford to fight with her sister.

Aniri’s life is supposedly perfect - she’s beloved by the people of Jungali and betrothed to their handsome prince. He’s a noble barbarian who’s pledged to use his skyship for peace, but the threat of a second skyship in the hands of rival country Samir looms over their impending marriage...and Aniri begins to question her rush to marry a man she barely knows. When the Second Daughter of Dharia is poisoned, Aniri tells her soon-to-be husband she must rush off to Samir to care for her beloved sister. After all, how can she wed when Seledri may be dying?

Sneaking out of the palace wasn’t one of Aniri’s best ideas. But she’s the third daughter of the Queen of Dharia - zero responsibilities and zero royal duties. She’s just the backup daughter, in case her older sisters’ arranged marriages - to take the crown or broker an alliance - don’t quite work out. But once Aniri reaches her 18th birthday, she’ll be truly free...and then she can marry the charming fencing instructor she meets for fevered kisses in the forest. But then the impossible happens - a marriage proposal. From a barbarian prince in the north, no less.

EPISODES 1-3 ("Delirium," "Agony," "Ecstasy") of the Debt Collector serial. Contains mature content and themes. What's your life worth on the open market? A debt collector can tell you precisely. Lirium plays the part of the grim reaper well, with his dark trenchcoat, jackboots, and the black marks on his soul that every debt collector carries.

Seventeen-year-old Elijah Brighton wants to become an ascender--a post-Singularity human/machine hybrid--after all, they're smarter, more enlightened, more compassionate, and above all, achingly beautiful. But Eli is a legacy human, preserved and cherished for his unaltered genetic code, just like the rainforest he paints. When a fugue state possesses him and creates great art, Eli miraculously lands a sponsor for the creative Olympics. If he could just master the fugue, he could take the gold and win the right to ascend, bringing everything he's yearned for within reach...

Episodes 4-6 of the Debt Collector serial. A chilling premise about a future world where, when your debts exceed your future potential earnings, a debt collector is called in to collect your life energy and transfer it to someone who can put it to better use. Lirium is the debt collector, and this story is about his struggle with who he is and the world he lives in - finding a way out of the near - madness of being someone who is the personification of the Grim Reaper.

Lirium plays the part of the grim reaper well, with his dark trenchcoat, jackboots, and the black marks on his soul that every debt collector carries. He's just in it for his cut, the ten percent of the life energy he collects before he transfers it on to the high potentials, the people who will make the world a better place with their brains, their work, and their lives. That hit of life energy, a bottle of vodka, and a visit from one of Madam Anastazja's sex workers keep him alive, stable, and mostly sane...until he collects again.